Simple Technique for Online Video Lesson

Just discovered "Picturing Information" a 4 minute video which analyzes an Infographic depicting per cent of mothers of 4-year-olds who work outside the home. After pausing to give viewers time to study the infographic and make their own analysis, author analyzes the infographic: Why does child have sad face? Why is mother pictured as a professional (vs blue collar job)?

As you can see from the video below, this is a very simple technique for creating a video to serve as an online lesson.  In many discussions of the 'flipped classroom' (where instructor records and posts a lecture for students to study before class so that classroom time can be used for actual discussion or hands-on activities), the tools involved are quite sophisticated and/or expensive.  But the technique here is easily available to anyone sitting at their home computer who has a smart phone or digital camera that records video.

One can easily adapt the technique of this video to use with widely available PowerPoint.  Just insert the infographic (or poem or short text) in a slide, record your narration, then convert to video (this function included in MS Office 2010 and later).

Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals

Many have asked why a Women's Studies program should include a course teaching computer skills and Web tools.  Aren't today's students already familiar with Microsoft Office and masters of the Web?  While students are definitely adept users of Facebook, most seem to lack experience with web tools more relevant to their future employment.  Few of my students have heard of, let alone know how to use, web tools such as:

• Blogs - used by many nonprofits, advocacy groups, and businesses
• Social bookmarking sites like Delicious - a handy research and networking tool
• RSS Readers or Start Pages -  to aggregate recent articles and blog entries in specified topics, very useful for keeping up-to-date with latest developments in your field
• Social media like Facebook and Twitter -  for professional networking and the promotion of social causes

While all students regularly use Word to compose essay assignments, few know how to use Heading Styles to provide a handy navigation aid for a long report (think of preparing quarterly sales reports or annual summaries of activities at a nonprofit agency).  All have prepared PowerPoints for class, but few have a clue about avoiding "death by PowerPoint" (avoid the same boring Microsoft templates, more single images & less bulleted text).

With so few job openings and so many candidates, students who can demonstrate some of the above skills provide added value to employers and are more likely to be successful in their job search. 

The skills described above are also useful for active citizenship, whether students only desire to be well-informed voters or intend to be participants in advocacy groups, political parties or trade unions.

It is not only WS majors who would profit from acquiring these computer and web skills; they are equally relevant for gerontology students, aspiring social workers, sociology and other liberal arts majors.  Perhaps social service programs and liberal arts departments should consider combining to offer a "Computer Skills for Aspiring Professionals" course to their students.

Resources and Examples:

• Delicious and Social Bookmarking - a Common Craft video
• About RSS Readers - a Common Craft video 
• Start Pages - Go to www.protopage.com/wscomputers to see  how one can access headlines from favorite blogs, bookmark useful web sites, display latest video on subject of interest, etc. Click on double down-arrow extreme right near top to view more pages – some directed to educators, some to non-profit organizations, some to Women’s Studies. 
• Using Heading Styles to Organize Notes in Microsoft Word 
• PowerPoint:  "Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book" - be sure to click to display Speaker Notes  
• PowerPoint:  Corvida Raven: Geek Girl Storybook - use of images, musical background, converted to video.

Non Traditional PowerPoints for Digital Storytelling

To show students what I mean by a non-traditional PowerPoint, I created a presentation about Ada Lovelace in the style of the classic children's Golden Book series.

Draft Ada Lovelace Picture Book from cronegeek

For those interested in learning more about Ada Lovelace and George Babbage or comparing with a more traditional Powerpoint, I am including another slideshow here.

Babbage & Lovelace: The designer of the analytical engine and its programmer from Carsten Ullrich

Corvida Raven: Geek Girl

For the last week of class, I assigned students to research a woman who has made an important contribution to the development of computers and/or the Internet. I also asked them to present their findings in an interesting digital storytelling mode - perhaps by using Voicethread or Prezi. In any event, they were not to use a traditional bullet-style PowerPoint.

One of the students chose to research Corvida Raven, one of the youngest contributors. I thought the student did an excellent job of matching the style of her presentation with Raven's style. And I thought others might enjoy it also.

Geek girl storybook

View more presentations from kerri.

Use Slide Shows for Resumes?

One of the purposes of the Women and Computers course is to prepare students for the job market, so I was intrigued by this posting by Amit of Digital Inspiration. The post has 4 or 5 examples of people who used the medium of a PowerPoint slide show to present their resume. I thought one of the examples near the end from a teacher was particularly interesting.

I didn't find any examples from women, only men. Women less willing to take risks with non-traditional approaches? Blog author preferred the men's examples?